Here are the actual federal laws regulating machine guns in the U.S.

The horrific mass shooting of scores of people in Las Vegas on Sunday has once again re-ignited the gun control debate in the U.S. News reports indicate that the shooter, who opened fired on a crowd of concertgoers on Sunday night, killed at least 50 people and wounded more than 200. Audio recordings of the shooting, which captured rapid fire bursts, suggest that the shooter used a fully automatic weapon. The speculation that the shooter may have used fully automatic weapons set off frenzied demands that the government do something to ban these weapons and charges that the so-called gun lobby was responsible for making machine guns legal and easy to buy.

The handful of tweets below are indicative of the current fact-free tenor of debate on the issue:

https://twitter.com/DanielNewman/status/914849280183152641

While the desire to prevent atrocities like the one committed in Las Vegas is both understandable and good, it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion on the best ways to prevent mass attacks when emotions, rather than facts, are the foundation for debate. Here are the facts on federal regulation of machine guns and fully automatic weapons in the United States.

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